For example, supplying bobbins around which spun yarns produced by means of ring spinning have been wound are transferred to an automatic winder, where the yarns from a large number of supplying bobbins are spliced together while defects in the yarns are being eliminated. Thus, the yarns are rewound into corn-shaped or cheese-shaped packages.
This rewinding executed by the automatic winder comprises a step for using a tenser to apply tension to the yarn rewound from the supplying bobbin while using a large number of yarn guides to guide the yarns to form them into a package. Thus, each time a yarn formed by twisting short fibers passes through the tenser or the yarn guide, the yarn, on which hairinesses have been present since the yarn was located on a supplying bobbin, tends to be subjected to friction and to have more hairinesses after the rewinding.
Thus, in the rewinding step in the conventional automatic winder, a hairiness suppressing device is provided in a yarn path to suppress hairinesses. This hairiness suppressing device carries out hairiness suppressing processing by jetting a gas such as air into a yarn passage through which the yarn passes in order to cause a whirling current, thereby ballooning the yarn to entangle hairinesses with the fibers for suppressing, or by using the ballooning to fly away the hairiness by force.
The hairiness suppressing device is structured to have a yarn insertion opening that extends and opens in an axial direction of the yarn passage so that a yarn is inserted into the yarn passage through this yarn insertion opening.
The prior art, however, has the following problems.
First, according to the conventional hairiness suppressing device, the yarn insertion opening is formed in the yarn passage in which a whirling current of a gas acts on a yarn, so the whirling current may leak from the yarn insertion opening and the yarn ballooning caused by the whirling current may become insufficient to preclude the ballooning-induced hairiness suppressing effect from being obtained as expected. A hairiness suppressing device that is divided into two so as to be opened and closed has been provided. Since, however, the abutting surfaces of these two parts cannot be aligned easily, it is difficult to perfectly prevent the whirling current from leaking from the side of the yarn passage.
Second, the conventional hairiness suppressing device can suppress hairinesses by ballooning the yarn, but dust or fluff adhering to the yarn may be entangled with and caught in the fibers together with the hairinesses. This entanglement of dust or fluff with the fibers degrades the quality of packages.
Then, there is a third following problem. A yarn rewinding device (an automatic winder) has disposed therein a slab catcher or a yarn clearer that can detect and remove defects in the yarn such as slabs, or those portions that have a thickness smaller or larger than a predetermined value. These devices, however, cannot detect those portions that have been weakened due to insufficient twisting, despite the lack of appearance defects. With a yarn that has a weak portion and that has not been detected by the slab catcher or yarn clearer, this portion may be cut during a subsequent step such as a warping step to reduce the working efficiency of this step.
In addition, although a known yarn processing method and device suppresses hairinesses by passing a spun yarn through a whirling air current, it cannot hold the yarn at the center of a gate to a whirling air current generation member that generates a whirling air current. Consequently, the yarn is insufficiently ballooned in the whirling air current generation member to prevent the desired suppression on hairinesses.
Furthermore, a fourth problem is that the conventional hairiness suppressing device cannot provide the effect of suppressing hairiness of a spun yarn as expected even by ballooning the yarn.
The present invention is provided in view of these problems, and its first object is to provide a hairiness suppressing device for an automatic winder that enables a spun yarn to be perfectly ballooned using a whirling current in a yarn passage.
The second object of the present invention is to provide a hairiness suppressing device that can suppress dust or fluff adhering to a spun yarn from being entangled with or caught in the fibers while hindering hairiness generation from being formed on a yarn being wound around a package by a winder.
The third object of the present invention is to solve the problems of the above conventional yarn processing methods and apparatuses in order to provide a spun yarn processing method and device that can remove weak portions of a yarn while simultaneously suppressing hairinesses.
Furthermore, a fourth object of the present invention is to provide a hairiness suppressing device capable of fully exhibiting a hairiness suppressing function and an automatic winder having integrated therein a mechanism for suppressing hairinesses.
That is, the present invention has been created to improve spun yarn hairiness suppressing methods and devices.